Hello-

Great website...first time post.

I own a 2004 F-150 Lariat...bought brand new. There are less than 40,000km on it now and since owning it, the rotors have been replaced twice and turned once....and now need to be replaced again.

The transmission/transfercase/rearend clunks, shifts hard and is very unstable at highway speeds. Oh, the 'clunk' I was told is an engineering thing that Ford 'meant' to be there.....thats what the Ford service assistant told me. I've lost my braking system once when reversing (luckily at slow speeds but still crashed in to something).

The 2 local Ford dealers don't feel that the brakes/transmission things are a problem....I was told to keep driving it and if something eventually breaks, then it would be clear that there was a problem. Also that it's not uncommon to replace your front rotors every 20,000 km! They've also said that since my vehicle has more than 20,000km on it...that Ford Canada won't touch the brakes under warranty (obviously the 3 times before mean nothing to them).

The president of the 2 dealerships has (I assume) told his staff to not deal with me or my vehicle anymore. I can't book it for servicing or have either of the service managers return my phonecalls.

So.....

....I filed in Small Claims Court against both dealerships (for not fixing the vehicle and for some of the stressful comments made about the safety of the vehicle)...as well as Ford Canada for developing such a crappy vehicle...a crappy vehicle that they knew would have engineering problems...and have been for some years now. I had a 1998 F-150 that did the same things...but it had almost 200,000km on it so it would be expected from that vehicle...not a brand new one.

Does anyone here have any advice, experience with these problems or insight in to the types of problems I've mentioned here?

 

how much is 20,000km for the non-metric folks out here?

40,000km?

200,000km?

 

20,000km=12427.42 mi
40,000km = 24,854 mi
200,000km = 124,274 mi

 

Aparently its not alot or not as much as it should be for all this to be going on. I hope the lawsuit works out in you're favor dude

 

I'm gonna say this.. even though I know I'll get flamed for it.

If you have had to have your brakes "fixed" twice now in the last 20k miles... you need to learn how to drive. I just turned over 33,000 miles and my brakes look almost brand new... I just inspected them the other day... Let me give you a couple tips:
1. Slow down BEFORE you reach a stop light. Brake early instead of HARD at the last second.
2. You dont have to reach 60MPH between stoplights.

As for the clunk. Some clunks are normal... there is a little play in the drivetrain. the driveshaft is not completly TIGHT at either end... tailshaft or pinion end. There is a little play and when you give it gas and the play is taked out of the shaft... it WILL clunk... Every rear-wheel drive vehicle I have ever driven has a slight clunk.

Maybe yours is in your trans.. but if its a drivetrain clunk... sorry pal, but its normal. Clunking too loudly or to harshly is a problem though.

 

warped rotors aren't always caused by hard braking. the new 150's have the wheel bearings pressed into the rotors (at least on the 2wd) and its been proven that if the lug nuts are too tight, the rotor will warp with the heat. i recall reading on FTW that 70 ft/lbs was the recommended torque for the lug nuts.

 

agreed..

e.g.- 2004 nissan titan and armada, huge problem with rotors warping, no matter who was driving, and how they were driving, thats what happens when manufacturers try to save money

 

My neighbor has a Titan and he filed for lemon law and the dealer ended up agreeing to pay him $5,000 and finally fixed his brakes by installing the next year's model brakes and now he hasn't had issues. He didn't do anything wrong, or anything different between then and now...yet his brakes are fine now.

so, no, it isn't always the driver's fault.

 

my truck has 15K miles on it and my rotors are warped (not normal). And I also have an aggervating clunk... It is in the transmission and is on the 1-2 shift it only occors sometimes.

The two things he described are probably the 2 most common problems with the 04-06 F150s. They are well documented on here. If his dealer wont address the problems they deserve a lawsuit. I would be surprised if it couldnt be resolved by actually getting Ford involved (not the dealership).

-stephen

 

, every 2wd truck that I have ever owned, up until the last one (1990 model) had the bearings mounted into the front hub, which the rotor was an integral part of.

The heat generated in your front hubs is not coming from your wheel bearings.

Next time you're by a trailer of some sort (that doesn't have trailer brakes) that has just stopped, put your hand on the wheel or hub and you'll see what I'm talking about. Worn bearings will generate a little heat, but even at that they just get warm unless they're about to come apart.


braking = heat (and lots of it), hard braking only makes it hotter

 

Stephen, had same issue on my 05 lariat screw and posted my issue here a while back ( year or so ) Basically, there is a pcm reflash that will fix the shift point. Mine was a rough 1-2 upshift, intermittant, but felt real bad when it happened. Also, a slipyoke lube got rid of the drive shaft 'clunk' but it may have been returning ( I traded in the truck so not sure how perminant the slip yoke lube was ). Subcribe to Infotraxx.com so you can see the service bulletins for your particular year vehicle. It may help you "help your dealer" diagnose your problem. Hope this helps..

 

Thanks for the info. I had done some research and i was pretty sure the shift problem was computer related. I have an edge tuner on the way... That should fix the shift problem. And I dont think i have the "driveline clunk". Just that 1-2 shift irregularity.

-stephen

 

Hi, can you source that a little more? I was told by the dealership that the lug nuts needed to be torqued down to 150 lbs. A bit high but not unknown. 70 sounds light.
On my truck there is the faintest bit of pulse on slow stops that make me think there may be a little warp starting. Not enough for a dealer to see, but still there.
Just over 10k on my truck.
Chris

 

i'll try and find the forum where i read it tonight, but thinking about this systematically... the 04+ 150's have the bearings pressed into the rotors. the studs are mounted on the hub. now, if you crank down the lug nuts, you're going to bind up the wheel bearing creating enormous amounts of heat, which is just the opposite of what a bearing is supposed to do. sure, put your hand near a trailer wheel bearing, or hub and its not hot, but put your hand near a bearing that was bound up, wrenched down too tight, not greased, or just bad, and then tell me how much heat it doesn't put off.
metal expands when it gets hot. if theres no play for it to expand, its gonna generate more heat moving through the next components in line, in this case being the rotors.

this is what i learned from the mechanic at the dealership... someone tell me if its out of wack.

 

Somebody post a picture of this on a current 2wd please so I know I'm not losing my mind.

How in the world do you "press" a wheel bearing into a rotor and have studs on a separate "hub"? Now I've seen separate rotors attached to hubs with the wheel bearings in the hub, but not the other way around. A brake rotor by itself is not a load bearing part on a vehicle (normally).

But I've never seen wheel bearings "pressed" into a hub (or a rotor). The races, yes... the bearings, no.

If you're getting enough heat from a wheel bearing to warp your rotors... your wheel bearings are going to fail long before that rotor does and those rotors would be the least of my worries.... but I haven't heard a single person complain about having to have their front bearings replaced or a wheel locking up and flying off at speed.